THE ART SCENE: Works by Yuri Skorupsky connect to his native Ukraine (10/17/04)

THE ART SCENE: Works by Yuri Skorupsky connect to his native Ukraine

by Olha Lahutenko

There is an old Chinese saying: "He who forgets about coming home, becomes homeless." The painter Yuri Skorupsky lives and works creatively under this principle, using the opposite approach" his thoughts and paintings are constantly connected with his native land, Ukraine.

Born in the historic town Rava-Ruska, close to the Polish border in the Lviv region, he completed his professional education at the Yaniv College of Fine Art (bachelor's degree), the Moscow National University of Art (master's degree) and the Lviv National Institute of Arts and Applied Design (master's degree). Steeped in this historical-cultural environment, in 1987 he decided with some colleagues to found the Dolya Association of Artists. The first thing Mr. Skorupsky did was invite his teacher, professors at the Lviv Institute of Arts and Applied Design and respected masters in Rava-Ruska to join his new society.

In 1991 fate brought the painter to the United States, where one of his first challenges, in 1992, was to paint one of the renowned Russian Orthodox Churches in Chicago, Holy Trinity Cathedral, designed by Louis Sullivan. Later Mr. Skorupsky painted the icons for the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception. In 1993-1994 the artist, through his Dolya Association of Artists, organized a U.S. tour to exhibit the works of 16 Ukrainian painters from New York to California. Over the next few years, Dolya held more than 20 group shows in different American cities.

It did not take long for Mr. Skorupsky to be recognized both in the U.S. and in Ukraine. By 1995 he was accepted as a member in the Chicago Art Coalition (CAC), in 1999 in the Oil Painters of America (OPA), in 2002 he was elected as an honored member in the Ukrainian National Union of Artists, in 2002 he became a lifetime member of the America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals, in 2003 he was included in the National Register's Who's Who in Executives and Professionals. Ukrainian papers wrote about him in America and his works appeared in top American art magazines and at national and international exhibits.

Since coming to America, Mr. Skorupsky has had six solo shows and has participated in more than 40 different group exhibits. His work is exhibited in many prestigious galleries throughout the United States and has been shown at the International Art Expo in New York and California.

The artist has also written many times as an art critic, publishing reviews of exhibitions and critiques of individual artists in Svoboda, The Ukrainian Weekly and other publications.

In a typical review of a Dolya exhibit, the artist as art critic writes equally openly about both his own works and the works of others: "This set of paintings is dearest to me. When I create the image of fields or beautiful flowers in the endless space of our native land. I remember my childhood. I remember the roads I walked along as a youth, developing into an artist. This path through the old willows has become part of me. These are the subjects of my paintings. That is why these works are so close to me, here in a foreign land. A part of my life is in them."

One of Mr. Skorupsky's works is called "The Path of My Youth" (2001), a picturesque view of the vast Carpathian foothills depicting flourishing grass and abundant flowers. A free wind blowing, a changeable sky, the soft blue range of distant mountains - all so painfully familiar and so unattainable. The painter builds a clear composition with the dynamic diagonals of the path, the balanced masses, the echoing colors. Magically, a rhythm is born between sky and silver path, between powerful mountains and delicate cornflowers and the landscape falls into a natural harmony.

Mr. Skorupsky's works are not simply fragments of nature taken from life, but "paintings" in the full, classic meaning of the word. Each work presents the world of nature in its perfect integrity, living by its own rules. At the same time, each work offers the no-less-wonderful world of painterly harmony created by the artist. The motifs he chooses are hardly idealized. He is inspired by living manifestations of nature, transitional states, the simple yet mysterious essence of interior life of the natural world.

Thus, the main subject of his work "Village in Winter Time" (1996), became the broken-up road where wet snow and melted water erode the surface of the land, opening its rich layers, its depth. Over the plowed land, the naked willow branches that pierce the sky sound a tense melody. It is as though every stroke every movement of the brush feels the flow of energy in the soil, the tree, the sky.

Mr. Skorupsky convinces the spectator that painting can convey sound. "Wind on the Steppe" (2002) is filled with the rustle of grass flowing in interwoven waves created by gusts of hot wind, while white clouds float silently above. "Winter Willows" (1998-2000) ring with the crystaline, high-pitched sound of an organ. Majestic silence spreads over his "Poppy Field" (2002), where the red stain of the petals becomes the golden mean between the fertile soil and the vast heavenly expanse surrounding ancient hills. The flaming poppies are seen as the embodiment of beauty, pouring over the world.

The image of his native poppies has inspired the artist time and time again. His painting "Poppies in the Field" (2001), for instance is filled with major chords. The painter complexity harmonizes the sound of bright and dark red, emerald and olive green, supplementing them with orange, cool blue and lilac. Using primary colors - red, blue and yellow - he achieves a fully realized harmony.

It is difficult for an art critic to capture the style of Mr. Skorupsky in a single word. Realism? Undoubtedly so, because everything in his work is real and the artist's spirit was in these very places, colors and strokes. Impressionism? Yes, because the works are based in real impressions, in an almost analytical investigation of the nuances of variable color. His command of the palette knife has earned him the title "master of the palette knife." Expressionism? Yes, again, because the painter's reach pulses in his works, his nervous energy is felt in them.

A trained eye will find both an echo of the modern, infatuation with the vital energies of flora and the aesthetics of ukiyo-e, the asymmetrical engravings of the Japanese masters. Still, the paintings of Mr. Skorupsky cannot be captured in a single definition; he is not merely ancillary to a particular tradition or trend, he cannot be summed up in a post-modernistic quote or in an offhanded approach to cultural heritage.

The artist is carrying on an inner dialogue with different cultures using the high standards of spiritual heritage and professional schooling. But the main thing is that he experiences again, and for the first time, an infatuation with the surrounding world of nature in every work.

Mr. Skorupsky's compositions are occasionally even symbolic. In his painting "Alone," a sunflower, its blooming petals and wide leaves drooping, its heavy head bent, personifies loneliness. The same sad and lonely melody of the flute sounds in the "Maple Leaf Autumn" (1995), where the red leaf freezes in a splashing puddle slapped by a prickly wind.

Mr. Skorupsky arranges water lilies, the favorite flower of Impressionists, in vertical expanses or asymmetrically fragmented horizontal compositions. Their leaves opened like Japanese parasols, star-shaped flowers fade away or float slowly across deep blue water, mysterious in its depth. The artist barely hints of their mystery and calls the viewer to savor the beauty, without asking where it came from and why.

In his compositions, as in a single video frame, the foreground looms large, as if made by a camera's zoom lens." The world is observed through the eyes of an excited child who longs to plunge into oblivion in "Red Admiral in the Yarrow Kingdom" (2001) or "Summer Symphony" (2001). The artist depicts a woman's body as the perfect divine creation in the work "Bloom of Youth" (1991), where he observes the flowing together of the form with love and tenderness, comparing the woman's beauty to the white rose, symbol of purity and love.

The artist is always revealed in his works, romanticism is the state of his soul, something impossible to imitate like true love. Yuri Skorupsky is recognized as a master painter, but his creative work continues to evolve - he continues his search for forms, language and color. The path of childhood is leading him along a perpetual path of self-discovery, a faithful path, where his infatuation with the world surrounding him and unfolding inside his soul can be expressed.

(Translated by Lidia Wolanska.)

Olha Lahutenko is deputy director for research at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. She holds a Ph.D. in art history.

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